quaker-parrot &laquo; WordPress.com Tag Feedhttps://en.wordpress.com/tag/quaker-parrot/
Feed of posts on WordPress.com tagged "quaker-parrot"Thu, 22 Feb 2018 07:01:00 +0000https://en.wordpress.com/tags/enhttps://parentingparrots.com/go/pets-2/lost-piper-our-quaker-parrot/
Wed, 07 Feb 2018 21:00:13 +0000Parenting Parrotshttps://parentingparrots.com/go/pets-2/lost-piper-our-quaker-parrot/So I did the stupid month of no pellets and everything seemed fine however I forgot about Piper. His diet should have been monitored a little more closely because he is prone to the fatty liver disease. The last week of “no pellet month”, he started refusing to eat his food, he was still eating his treats when trained but otherwise the fruit, veggies, pasta, rice, bread etc was not being touched.

He somehow managed to maintain his weight of 99 kg so I wasn’t too worried and I knew it was just a matter of days before I would go to the store to buy pellets. I continued to monitor him. His poop was hard to monitor because of all the fruit and veggies being incorporated into their diet, so it was very watery. Anyhow he was still training and activity level remained the same, until that Thursday, he came out of the cage and started training but refused the treat at one point. Piper has NEVER refused a safflower seed EVERY! My red flags immediately went up! He flew away from everyone on to a stand that’s in a corner. If you know Piper, he is a social butterfly and never wants to be alone. The Wednesday he weighed 97kg but it was still close to 99 so I wasn’t concerned but that Thursday he weighed 91kg I immediately was scared. He flew away from me and wouldn’t fly back when called, I was scared.

Friday came and he was at the bottom of his cage, not being able to lift his head up for long. He weighed 81kg. He mustered up all his energy to fly once or twice when out otherwise he would find a dark spot and hide. I was in trouble. My credit card for the birds were maxed and I was in negative in my bank account (being on maternity leave is not easy :(). I was devastated over the fact that Piper needed me and I couldn’t bring him to the vet because I was broke! I made sure to provide him water via my finger so he wouldn’t be dehydrated and put him in his cage with a cover so he could rest.

Saturday morning, I was scared to uncover him but I did and he was still alive. I sent for pellets, milk thistle and a syringe. I made the pellets into a mash with the milk thistle and fed him through the syringe 1ml every hour. He seemed to be doing better. In the night I tried to give him 4ml of the mash and when I went to weigh him he became unbalanced, fell to the floor, I believe hitting his kneel (I made have that spelt wrong) bone and died.

I feel like I failed Piper, Lola, Parenting Parrots, my kids and myself. I’m so sorry, I don’t know where I went wrong but I know just like with Lola I feel an empty space in my heart.

Piper was amazing beyond words. Every morning I was greeted with “Good Morning, How are you?” and I would respond with “Good Morning Piper, I’m good how are you?” He would then say, “I’m good, how are you?” I believe he was waiting for me to teach him what to say next but I never did. Every evening we ended our night with a wonderful, “Good night”. Piper would sing Sugarland – Stuck like Glue. It was his favorite song, even when we would be singing a different song he would jump in with Sugarland lyrics. He knew all the kids’ names and would call each one. He especially loved to call Shennai because she would bring him a treat every time he called for her. He would be the starter of our “peek-a-boo” games. He would say it first and the other birds would follow. He just learned “Peek-a-Boo, I see you”. So if I said Peek a boo he would respond with I see you. He was just so talented. He loved interacting with people and other birds.

Piper would fly to the other parrots’ cage and let them out. I was planning on having a video on YouTube called “Prison Break – Parrot edition” and it was going to show Piper letting out Rasta or Ringo or himself as those are the only 3 cages he could open. I would turn my back and all of a sudden I would have Piper and Rasta out doing nonsense hahaha. I miss those days now. The house doesn’t seem the same without him – he was the glue that truly kept the flock together.

He would always engage with all our visitors. He is going to be missed so much! I loved watching his green and blue wings soaring through the house, I was so excited to get him harness trained so I could take him outside and now I will never have that chance. NEVER in a million years did I think I would lose Piper so soon. I was always so careful with him and his diet. I don’t know what exactly went wrong but I take full responsibility. Life will never be the same without Piper here to stir things up but this has gotten me doing further research into the other parrots’ diet because it’s the only thing I could think of that went wrong.

I’m sorry for the long post but I’m still hurting. I sit and watch the videos of him every night, it feels unreal and I’m to blame because I didn’t have money saved for their emergencies like I recommend others to do. I feel like a hypocrite, I tell everyone to make sure they do it and here I am with their credit card maxed so I couldn’t do what needed to be done. Maybe if I had the funds, I could have saved his life. I will still be blogging about things to do with Quakers because now more than ever do I feel the need to share how they should be taken care of and how precious they are. I feel like I took Piper for granted and I’m experiencing that feeling of: “You never know what you have until it’s gone.” I have a video of Piper, the Friday before he died but it’s sad.

I will not be obtaining another quaker parrot a.k.a monk parakeet unless I somehow inherit one. It hurts when you lose a member of your family. We got Piper the same time my 1st daughter was born maybe that’s why they were so close. She keeps asking me for him, so far I told her he is at the doctors. I don’t know how to tell her he is gone. At first, I was wondering if I could get another quaker and re-teach it all the things Piper knew so she wouldn’t know the difference but financially it’s not an option so I’m hoping with time, she will slowly become unattached and I can then break the news.

Please don’t judge me, I just know Piper was her favorite and I don’t want to see her heartbroken. The below video was a brief video that isn’t complete, it was shot in the end of December 2017, I started it for our YouTube channel but changed my mind and used a different footage.

Parenting Parrots
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https://living4hisglory.wordpress.com/go/writing/trying-to-help-someone-who-is-missing-a-beautiful-green-bird-with-white-face-and-chest/
Tue, 25 Jul 2017 15:45:53 +0000Mary/Living For His Gloryhttps://living4hisglory.wordpress.com/go/writing/trying-to-help-someone-who-is-missing-a-beautiful-green-bird-with-white-face-and-chest/https://kittycaperz.wordpress.com/go/toby/q-is-for/
Thu, 20 Apr 2017 12:10:09 +0000Sabina Aynehttps://kittycaperz.wordpress.com/go/toby/q-is-for/https://deepsouthart.com/2016/11/15/lovely-green-quaker-parrot/
Tue, 15 Nov 2016 04:45:03 +0000Cynthia Haltom, Ph.D.https://deepsouthart.com/2016/11/15/lovely-green-quaker-parrot/
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Thu, 16 Jul 2015 16:00:29 +0000sweetbettyshttps://sweetbettysblog.wordpress.com/go/uncategorized/cameron-the-laughing-quaker-parrot/So after I posted a photo showing, much to my surprise, the video of my goofy bird laughing has gotten of 600,000 views (in five years granted), I was told I just had to tell the story of how I found out if my bird was a boy or a girl.

When I first got Cameron (who was named Dexter at the time), I thought I was getting a boy. With Quaker parrots there really is no easy way to visually tell gender, and I was planning on one bird only, so really it didn’t matter to me either way. But I liked the name Cameron because it means crooked nose in Gaelic and my little monster has only part of a top beak after an altercation with another (much bigger) bird. Don’t worry, she eats just fine and it doesn’t hurt at all. In fact, it is growing back in nicely and in a few years may even look normal!

But I digress. So I brought Cameron home in January 2009. Dad paid the adoption fee as my Christmas present that year and I was so excited to have a pet again! And for about the next 3-4 years nothing ever suggested that Cam was anything other than a normal Quaker boy. But one spring, I noticed Cam put on some weight. Not bad but something to watch out for. Oh and can we say cranky jerk much? I could barely touch Cam for close to two months without getting attacked. And oh did Cam get territorial of the cage. I couldn’t reach in anymore without a fight and it really made cleaning difficult. There were a lot of pinched fingers and bleeding knuckles for a few months.

So one fine morning, in my sleep induced haze, I go to uncover the cage and find myself thinking, “Gosh what is that in the corner? It is too round to be part of her banana treat from last night. How did Cam get a Cadbury mini egg in there? Wait, I don’t have any Cadbury mini eggs in the house. Oh dear god it is cracked and there is stuff inside. Oh yep that is an egg, a real bird egg. In the bottom of the cage.”

Talk about mind melting revelations by 6am! So Cameron is really a girl, there is definitive proof of that. She went on to lay not one but FOUR eggs that spring. Two of them cracked when she laid them but two remained intact and she would sit near them at first. After about a day she would lose interest in it so I was able to remove them from her cage safely. But that really did explain her nesting behavior and mood swings! Thankfully she hasn’t had another batch since, I was paranoid she would get egg bound or depressed with they didn’t hatch and spent hours online researching what to do.

Love and gender bending,

Betty

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Sun, 17 May 2015 13:24:52 +0000Beth's Photographshttps://fishkind.wordpress.com/go/animals-2/birds-animals/monk-parakeets-gather-branches-for-nests/It’s always special seeing wild parrots in suburban Long Island. (See my earlier post: Wild on Long Island: Parrots.) Monk Parakeets (also known as Quaker Parrots) are native to Argentina and classified as “released exotics” here. They’ve adapted and been in New York City and surrounding areas for decades.

I’ve seen Monk Parakeets once before at Levy Preserve; they stopped briefly in the trees to eat before moving on. This time I had a good look as I watched them gather nesting material. The parakeets use their strong beaks to chop through a branch, grab it, then balance it before flying off to their nests nearby.